by Subhash K Jha

Anil's comic turn in Anees Bazmi's Welcome has brought the house down.

But on the sets it wasn't always pleasant between Anil and his immediate co-star Nana Patekar.

"Yeah, he's known to be temperamental. And yes a couple of time he definitely flipped the lid and walked off the sets. But he was back again once he cooled down. How do I react to temper tantrums on the sets? I keep to myself sit in a corner observe the tamasha and wonder why the actor is behaving the way he is."

Anil admits to getting angry just a couple of times in his entire career. "But only when the work is suffering. Otherwise, never. I don't demand anything. In fact, on the contrary I keep giving and not expect anything in return."

Appreciative calls and messages flood the Kapoor household.

Says Anil, "Frankly the feedback for my performance in Welcome is embarrassingly lavish. Shocking! I never expected it. See, I played the mobster with sincerity. I've played it seriously and not funny. I look funny to the audience"

Ask him if he did the film for the sake of getting together with his Parinda co-star Nana, and Anil protests, "Believe me, I didn't even know what the film was all about or who'd be in it.

Anees asked me to do it. That was enough for me. I had done No Entry with him. I knew he had a comic flair. I was sure he won't make me do anything embarrassing.

The whole thing could've gone wrong. Thank God, it worked. I'm humbled and shocked by the reaction."

Anil's only other comic outing in recent times was No Entry.

"The only way your roles work are if you make them different each time. There's no point in doing an unbroken series of comic roles. When one genre clicks for other actors they keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Not me.My longevity is explained by doing the unexpected. There're 3-5 genres that audiences accept me in. And I keep doing them."

Anil is cautious about the idea of doing a sequel to Welcome. "It all depends on how the first part performs. The opening has been outstanding in spite of the film not being releasing in the multiplexes. It released on Wednesday on Dubai and the collections were phenomenal."

Was Anil cautious about doing a film with so many other actors? "Why do you say that? True I've done a majority of single leads. But in films like Karma where I had the great Dilip Saab, Nutan and others. I look at my role and the scope of performance. If I'm happy with that it doesn't matter who's in the film. I just do my job."

In his next release Race Anil says he has only a cameo. "It's basically the story of two brothers Akshaye Khanna and Saif Ali Khan. I play a cop, after a long time. This is my first film with Abbas-Mustan and therefore special.

Abbas and Mustan come very well prepared.It's releasing in February 2008. Then in March I've Subhash Ghai's Black Or White. In April I've Yashraj releases Tashan."

That's four releases in five months!

"I'm still hungering for challenging parts. I want to make my career for the next twenty years," says the insatiable Kapoor.